Des fantômes de Duvalier à Montréal. La (post)mémoire empêchée dans L’Écho de leurs voix de Jan J. Dominique
Phantoms of Duvalier in Montreal. Blocked (Post)Memory in L’Écho de leurs voix by Jan J. Dominique

Author(s): Piotr Sadkowski
Subject(s): Theoretical Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, French Literature, Philology
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: Haiti; blocked memory; postmemory; phantom; guilt
Summary/Abstract: Born in 1953 in Port-au-Prince, living in Montreal, Jan J. Dominique in her writings focuses on Haitians who inherit the trauma of the victims of dictatorship. This article concerns her 2016 novel L’Écho de leurs voix. It explores the life of a twenty year old girl struggling with the difficult family history and the guilt inherited from her grandmother, who worked for the criminal regime and was responsible for brutal persecutions herself. The action of the novel is set among Haitians in Montreal, among descendants of victims and perpetrators. Illustrating transgenerational trauma, Jan J. Dominique uses metaphors borrowed from Haitian voodoo. Th e traditional motif of possession by loa renders the spectral presence of past traumatic experiences, which have not been subjected to memory work and mourning. The article engages with the moral and psychological problems represented in the novel by referring to the concepts of Paul Ricoeur (memory and guilt), Marianne Hirsch (postmemory) and Nicolas Abraham (phantom).

• Details
• Contents